


A Love Story in Reverse

by chattyblue



Series: A love story [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hospitals, Illnesses, Insomnia, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chattyblue/pseuds/chattyblue
Summary: "And it's one of the more tragic moments of his life because even as he's sitting there, as it's happening, he's already missing this moment, has a moment where he's grieving a woman who's right in front of him."
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Series: A love story [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206029





	A Love Story in Reverse

**Author's Note:**

> TW for major character death and talk of illness. Not medically accurate and not claiming to be medically accurate.

It ends like this.

The sun is just barely cresting over the horizon. Her hand flexes in his, one last time. She's gone before the nurse arrives.

***

The last hotel room is on the second floor. The blankets are soft and they have a view of mountains in the distance. Will is awake, but she won't respond to anything, is there but isn't. Josh holds her hand until the ambulance comes, with the paramedics and the EMTs, even though he can see in her eyes that wherever she is, it's not there, not with him. 

But her hand is the only part of her he can touch, so he keeps holding it.

***

Their last day good starts in a mom-and-pop music store. Will does a song on the drums set up for local performances and Josh has a moment where he wonders how humans can do things like this. You know someone for nearly ten years and you can still learn something completely new about them.

She's good, obviously. Had clearly practiced a lot at some point in time. He tries to imagine a younger Will, like how Melanie had looked when she came to live with them, but with dark eyes. Had she had to practice at her school? Somewhere else? A dingy dive bar that had let her in when she'd shown up, clearly not twenty-one but with a black eye or a bruised lip. Did she perform anywhere? Does somebody, somewhere, who Josh doesn't know and probably never will, have a video of teenage Will rocking out on a set of drums? There's a whole world of people out there who haven't ever met Will and his heart breaks for them.

He records the whole thing on his phone. Melanie insists on buying a guitar pick with a picture of Troy from High School Musical, even though she doesn't have a guitar.

***

They get back to their latest hotel, and when Josh comes back from getting them food Melanie is in her room, but Will is missing, so he goes searching. Fifteen minutes later, he finds her in the smoking section. She grimaces when she sees him, but doesn't put it out.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey," he responds. A few seconds later he asks, "do you have another one?"

He's leaning beside her, so he can see her eyes beneath the lenses, and he can tell she's genuinely shocked by what he said, which is something he's not usually able to do, but she recovers quickly. 

"No dice. I had to bum this one. Besides-" she pauses, takes a drag, and smiles at him, "these things will kill you."

***

She wants to go on a road trip. 

They wait for the summer, after Melanie graduates. It's late afternoon, so they all stop for food, and then they drive until they find their first hotel that they check into.

Will was mostly present throughout their meal, but she spends most of the car ride in a daze, not focused. It's fine. The fact that she was coherent at all today speaks volumes. 

***

Her lead doctor is a very nice woman. She specializes in sleep disorders. She recommends hospice, or a caretaker. At this point, the focus is end of life care, pain management. 

Will rents a car for a summer instead.

***

It's 4 am and he's up late because he's grown used to odd hours and he has a report he's been putting off for too long. His phone buzzes with a text and he checks it absent-mindedly, humming along to the music from his earbuds.

I haven't slept in 82 hours. How could you do this to me. Why are you doing this to me. i had something once and then it went missing but i didnt even realize it was missing until you brought it back to me. i was supposed to be alone and then i was supposed to die and then nobody was going to get hurt. i had it all planned out, josh. this isnt fair.

He texts back you should try to get some sleep.

She texts back I cant.

A minute after that she texts back thanks for the laugh tho.

***

Melanie and Will start screaming at each other within 20 minutes of Will coming home. Josh ambles off to the kitchen to make sweet tea. Good old Southern hospitality.

Melanie is 13, and is in eighth grade, and she can't live with their mother anymore because their mother is a crazy bitch and their eldest sister is a crazy bitch and Will is also a crazy bitch but at least she's not a mean, alcoholic crazy bitch. And besides, Melanie is very self sufficient, and can take the bus, and also CPS keeps trying to do reunification and then when that inevitably fails they keep switching her between foster homes. Have a heart, Will.

Will is 26, and has just gotten a doctorate in physics. Mostly online, as being forced to stay awake for days on end by her body that is intent on killing her can make it hard to keep up with work. She left her home when she was fifteen, and then she got addicted to drugs, and then she had a solid three years where her life wasn't complete shit, and then she went a whole week without sleep and had to be checked into the hospital, and then she bounced between doctors until, finally, she got a diagnosis for why over the counter sleeping pills didn't work on her.

Will has fatal familial insomnia. It's going to kill her. It's probably going to kill her soon. Josh quietly deposits his sweet tea in the middle of the sisters.

They agree to let Melanie stay for a week. Josh knows it's probably going to be a lot longer than that. 

***

Will is failing to teach him how to ice skate. 

"I can't do it," he says, clutching the railing. "I tried, okay, I tried but I can't, but it's okay because failure is a part of life." He screams the last part because his precarious attempt at balance finally bites the dust and he sags further down the wall, his knees digging into the ice. 

Will laughs at him, the asshole, and crouches down to be face to face. She pushes her sunglasses up into her hair and wow, look, actual eye contact. Her nose scrunches up and oh, yeah, freckles. 

"You're a surgeon," she says, "I think you can handle some ice."

He glares at her for a few more seconds, if only to see her smile grow wider, before he grumbles, "yeah, okay, but if I fall again I'm taking you with me."

And he's expecting a laugh, another snarky comment because that's what they do but instead her gloved hand comes up to cup his face, and her thumb rubs back and forth underneath his eye, just once.

"I won't let you fall," she says, quiet. Her expression is… not anything he's seen on her face before, but he knows all too well what it means, what Will is really saying. And it's one of the more tragic moments of his life because even as he's sitting there, as it's happening, he's already missing this moment, has a moment where he's grieving a woman who's right in front of him. 

He turns his head instead, presses his mouth into her gloved palm, and when she lets out a sharp breath he knows she was reading his face, too. 

***

He opens the door and a teenager is standing there.

"Hey," she says, walking in, "Josh, right?"

He blinks at the place where she was for a moment before closing the door and turning to the girl, who's already setting up her laptop on the dining table.

"Uh, who are you?" he asks eloquently.

"Melanie. Heard my sister was staying here."

And. Well. Staying here. Bit of an understatement. And he can kind of see it. They both have the same dark hair. She hasn't quite grown into the cheekbones Will has, not with her baby fat, but the structure's definitely there. Doesn't explain why she's at his apartment.

"Why are you at my apartment?"

She rolls her eyes.

***

Will is rocking back and forth, and she's sobbing.

"I just want to sleep," she begs, clutching her hair, "I want to sleep, I want to sleep, please let me sleep, I'm sorry."

He shushes her, and he holds her, and it takes another seven hours before she finally collapses.

***

Later, afterwards, in some bizarre grief induced haze, he sits down and he does the math. The halfway point, halfway between when he met Will and when he lost Will, was April 18th. He doesn't remember what he did that day.

***

Actually getting to see Will sleep is a miracle in and of itself. She retreats to her room most nights, so if she does sleep he doesn't see it. She can function on less hours of sleep than most people, but it gets her. It always gets her at some point.

He gets home one day, and Will is asleep on the couch. Her phone is in her hand, and one of the earbuds is still firmly lodged in her ears. He sits down, quietly, in the armchair across from her. Will is usually so awake, so present in her body, it's strange to see her quiet and still. Her fingers are curled around her phone, and her blue nail polish is chipping. He'd had to wipe off his when his supervisor had thrown a massive fucking fit about it. 

He turns on his phone and opens up his notes app. It's been a while since he's written anything.

***

"Prion diseases or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans and animals. They are distinguished by long incubation periods, characteristic spongiform changes associated with neuronal loss, and a failure to induce inflammatory response.

The causative agents of TSEs are believed to be prions. The term 'prions' refers to abnormal, pathogenic agents that are transmissible and are able to induce abnormal folding of specific normal cellular proteins called prion proteins that are found most abundantly in the brain. The functions of these normal prion proteins are still not completely understood. The abnormal folding of the prion proteins leads to brain damage and the characteristic signs and symptoms of the disease. Prion diseases are usually rapidly progressive and always fatal."

***

The next day on his lunch break, he walks a block away from his work to order Indian food, and the girl from the hospital, who is a patient, in and out, and also a former smoker, is sitting at a table by the window with sunglasses pulled over her eyes, and as soon as Josh walks in she turns her head in his direction and then uses her leg to nudge the chair opposite her away from the table.

The girl's name is Will. He's met a lot of Wills before, but he's never met a girl with the name.

Will doesn't get any visitors.

He throws a forkful of salad at her. He has to change his scrubs when he gets back. 

***

He's been interning at the hospital and he's gotten lost roughly 20 times in the week he's been there. He doesn't even know what ward he's in so he shuffles to the side of the hallway and tries to frantically flip through his clipboard for his map.

"Didn't think interns usually made their way down here."

He looks up. A girl has alighted herself on the wall next to him. She's got dark curly hair and he doesn't think he's seen anyone with bags under their eyes that dark. 

He clears his throat, looks down at his chart and lets out a small laugh.

"I'm a little lost," he admits, shyly. And then, "how'd you know I was an intern?"

"You have a giant ass badge with your face on it that says you're an intern," she shoots back, pointing at his chest. She's chewing gum, and the fingers on the hand not raised to his chest tap against each other in a rhythmic pattern.

"Smoker?" he asks. He doesn't know why.

She leans back further into the wall, and whatever slightly playful expression that had been on her face drops away, leaving nothing. It's unnerving. She's silent for a second, her eyes flick up and down, and finally she says, "Writer?"

He raises an eyebrow and his heart rate picks up slightly. 

She laughs at whatever expression is on his face, nearly a bark. Yeah, definitely a smoker.

"We went to the same college. You had some good articles in the paper. Clearly passionate."

"Small world," he says to her, smiles his smile he knows has a certain appeal to all kinds of people.

She pops a bubble with her gum.

"Are you a visitor?" he tries again.

She smirks slightly, but her eyes skitter over his shoulder. 

"Patient," she says, "I'm in and out. Word to the wise, doc, stay away from the shrimp salad."

"I'll keep it in mind. Anything you actually like here?"

Her eyes flicker back to him once and then away. "Nothing great here, but there's Indian a block away. Maybe I'll see you there sometime, Josh."

She walks away. She didn't tell him her name. He didn't tell her his.


End file.
